Eight Firsts for Shawn and Gus
by dress without sleeves
Summary: It all starts somewhere. // "I wanna be your friend. You interested?" Gus/Shawn.


**Author's Notes:** Um, why haven't I watch this show before? Unacceptable.

Eight Firsts for Shawn and Gus

1.

Gus and Shawn first become friends like this: on the first day of second grade, Shawn drops his open-faced peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the lap of Ryan Brickhouse and then refuses to lick it off when the taller (read: fatter) boy demands it. So Shawn gets a black eye and half a swirly before Gus strolls in and slow-blinks at them all. He looks around at everyone with big wide eyes and asks, "Oh, hey. What are you guys doing?"

"Nothing," Ryan says quickly, and scuttles out.

Two days later, Shawn's dad is trying to teach him a lesson about perseverance or determination or possibly something about not throwing ice balls, but that's not important. Either way, Shawn is stuck shoveling the driveway of their neighbor Louise. It's going pretty good until Gus falls out of Louise's tree and lands on him.

"Oh," Gus says, blinking down at him. "Sorry."

Shawn examines him suspiciously. "What're you following me around for?"

Gus just shrugs. "I wanna be your friend. You interested?"

"Okay," Shawn says, and sticks out his hand.

2.

Shawn's first crush is named Jess Milgrow. Jess is tall, good-looking, and five years older. Jess also plays football and mows his lawn without a shirt on. Shawn knows that this sort of behavior on his part is the kind of thing his father frowns upon, so instead of telling anyone about it he kisses Jess's little sister Debbie on the playground and tells everyone that her tongue tastes like apples.

"I like apples," Guys says diplomatically.

"You like grapes better," Shawn points out.

"Yeah, that's true. Still. Apples are all right."

Shawn takes an unnecessarily large bite of sandwich and grumbles, "They're okay, I guess."

3.

Gus's first crush is Trish Connor. He spends a week looking at her with longing and then finally asks her stutteringly if she'd like to be his date to their first middle-school dance. When Trish says yes, Shawn decides that she's the ugliest thing he's ever seen and he should probably make sure everyone knows it.

Gus gets mad when Trish firmly refuses to go to the dance because she doesn't want to get made fun of, but in Shawn's opinion, if you can't take the heat, don't come to the bonfire.

4.

Gus and Shawn's first real fight is the last week of summer their sophomore year. They've fought before, but none of them really count because what Shawn means when he says "fight" is that Gus doesn't speak to him for a couple hours and then forgets his mad after Shawn keeps up a steady train of babble that eventually interests him.

But that night Gus is on a date with some no-name from last Tuesday at the Buy More when Shawn wanted to buy new binoculars. Shawn has realized that it's dangerous to ever let Gus out of his sights in public, because he has that puppy-eyes, big-mouth, gorgeous-teeth thing going for him that draws women to him like bees and pie. Or butter. Or syrup. Or something, Shawn doesn't remember, and it's not important to the story.

Anyway. Shawn decides in a _not weird_ way that it's probably best to follow them, because Gus is too trusting for his own good and clearly can't be left to his own devices. This girl is probably a thief. Or a harlot. Or a ... racist. Or something.

Also, Shawn may or may not have noticed the Bruce Lee abs that Gus somehow manages to maintain between reading comic books and doing math, or whatever. And double also, he's probably in love with him.

Beside the point, definitely.

Anyway, so there's kind of an incident with Shawn and the new binoculars and maybe a little _kiss-tus interruptus. _And then for no reason at all, Gus goes and overreacts by punching him. And Shawn can't just take that, because he's not a girl and Gus has always secretly wanted to get in a fistfight, so he hits back.

"What is the_ matter_ with you?" Gus shouts as no-name cowers in the corner, shrieking but obviously kind of liking it because she thinks they're fighting over her.

Shawn wipes his mouth. There's blood on it. "What's the matter with _me_?" Shawn yells back and feels himself getting _so mad_ because Gus is such an _idiot_ all the time. "What's the matter with _you_?"

"_I'm_ not the one who's _stalking people_!"

"I'm not _stalking_ you!" Shawn declares, affronted. "I'm just … " he flounders. He hadn't really thought it this far through and he doesn't think that 'making sure you don't get a girlfriend because I don't like sharing things' will go down very well.

It takes Gus a whole four days before Gus shows up at his door. He's holding the binoculars that Shawn forgot at the restaurant. "You're an idiot," Gus tells him sullenly. "Don't leave your stuff lying around."

5.

Gus and Shawn's first extended time apart is the four lost years where Gus goes to college. Shawn considers following him there, because they're Shawn-and-Gus and separation seems impossible.

But Shawn can't go to school for a whole four extra years, not even for Gus, so instead he decides to go on a road trip. Maybe he'll get a couple of jobs. Possibly he'll try his hand at acting, camping, and/or crime. Definitely he should try to find the end of a rainbow, which Gus claims doesn't exist but Shawn hasn't given up hope.

Anyway. For Thanksgiving Gus calls his parents to tell them that he can't come home because he's got exams, so Shawn takes his motorcycle and shows up at his dorm that morning. Gus is still in class, so Shawn breaks in by pretending to be his mentally handicapped adoptive brother.

When Gus shows up, he slow-blinks at Shawn like he did the first day in the bathroom. "I kind of expected you yesterday," Gus says, throwing his backpack on his bed.

"You couldn't even _fake_ surprise?" Shawn grumbles, and sighs.

6.

Gus and Shawn's first kiss is five years into their work with the police department. Shawn's pretty comfortable with the way things are; he's used to it. He's even gotten really good at letting Gus go on dates and stuff.

Well, sort of good at it.

Anyway, there's this whole thing with Juliet that Shawn is trying to figure out, because he actually really _likes_ her, so now the only problem is tricking her into dating him, or at least pretty heavily making out. Sex should definitely remain on the table.

But what happens is that he and Gus are at the agency, working late. Well, Shawn says working, but what he means is that they're in the middle of a pretty intense hackie sack competition. Which is kind of like working. Anyway, it involves thoughts.

And then all of a sudden their window is shattering and someone is actually _shooting_ at them, which honestly, Shawn finds really rude, because now they have to fix not only their window, but also the bullet holes everywhere, and he can already hear Gus in his head whining about his good credit.

They're huddled underneath Shawn's desk and it takes him a second to realize that Gus is breathing really hard. He's usually good at picking up on things, but it takes him longer than he should to notice that Gus has his hand pressed over his side and that there's blood on it.

"So, I think I've been shot," Gus informs him flatly. "Don't freak out."

"Freak out?" Shawn asks, the words running together. "Me? Freak out? Why would I freak out? I'm a picture of calm, dude, I'm like the ocean in the mid-summer under a half-moon when it's low tide and the dolphins are out playing. That's how calm I am right now. Also, we should probably see about an ambulance, maybe some cops, do you happen to have any gauze I could wrap you up with, because that's a lot of blood, my friend. But don't worry, you're totally fine, I can sense it, you're going to be right as rain in a couple days."

"You're not really psychic, Shawn," Gus reminds him. He closes his eyes.

"Yeah," Shawn says, "but I can still guess pretty good, right, so it's almost the same thing, one of those motive/murder situations, same family. And whatnot."

Gus smiles, not at him, but for him, and with Gus it's like the same thing. He seems like he's falling asleep as he asks, "Do you remember Jess Milgrow?"

Shawn frowns. "Debbie Milgrow's older brother?"

"Yeah. He used to mow their lawn without his shirt on all the time."

He nods, swallowing. "Yeah. Yeah, I remember him. Why?"

"I had a crush on him for like, the longest time," Gus mumbles. He's definitely falling asleep now. Shawn is pretty sure that's bad, like you're not supposed to fall asleep when you're bleeding, it's some weird doctor rule and he's dialed 911 but who can trust Lassimer to do anything in a timely fashion, I mean honestly. "He was my first kiss."

Shawn blinks, jaw dropping. "_Jess Milgrow_ was your first kiss?!" he hisses, and he's honestly sort pissed because, _what._ "What the hell?!"

"Our sophomore year. He was home for the summer and worked at the Tastee Freeze. I kept going by to get the same thing and I'd never wear a shirt, 'cause. Bruce Lee."

"Dude, I cannot believe you never told me about that. Jess Milgrow. _Damn._ I would have given you so much more credit if I knew you'd hit that."

Gus is quiet for a minute and stops answering when Shawn says his name, so Shawn grabs his face and kisses him. He figures this will work for two reasons: one, hopefully the shock will wake him up and keep him awake, and two, if that fails, the lack of available air should do it.

Gus starts, sort of, and seems to panic a little bit, but his fighting ability is kind of down so Shawn just keeps right on kissing him until the paramedics arrive.

He rides in the ambulance to the hospital, but Shawn is awesome, so like he predicted, Gus is fine.

7.

Gus and Shawn's first DTR happens over jerk chicken (what else?). They've been sort of doing something for a couple weeks, but it's not really anything and it's mostly just sometimes.

Usually when they're drunk or Shawn is in a particularly good mood.

They sit down with really mature intentions, but _Space Jam_ is on, and Shawn really likes Bugs Bunny, so.

8.

Gus and Shawn's first anniversary happens on a Monday, but they don't realize it until the Friday after.

"Crap," Shawn says as he wakes up. "We had a really great opportunity to blow of work and do dirty fun things and we totally missed it."

"Well," Gus points out thoughtfully, "No one can really _prove_ when our anniversary was."

Shawn grins and presses the snooze button on his alarm. "I like the way you think, Guster. You're far sneakier than people give you credit for. I don't know why they blame me for all our shenanigans, you can be blamed for definitely a good - "

" - Forty percent of them. I _know_ you were going for fifty but that's just a lie."

"_What_? Forty? Gus. Come on. I'll give you forty-eight."

"Forty-two."

"Forty-seven?"

"Forty-five, final offer."

Shawn hesitates. He can't decide if this is winning or losing, and he doesn't like losing. "Give me forty-five and a half and it's done."

Gus rolls his eyes, but he makes the deal.


End file.
